The character was then scaled up to fill the frame more as I wanted her to feel imposing and indomitable and she was just too small in the previous composition. Now she felt larger than life and much more heroic. The colors were also starting to gel at this point. I wanted to offset the reds of the character with a cooler background, helping to project the character forward. The red suggests anger, action, and danger, all the qualities I wanted the character to channel to the viewer. I still hadn't committed to the lighting one hundred percent which is why a lot of the painting is still looked very loose. Once I was really satisfied with the lighting I started to paint the details (Fig.05).

Fig. 05

Slowly I started to refine the painting, especially in focal areas such as the upper body and the head of the axe. I tried to bear in mind where I wanted the viewer's eye to go as these are the most important parts of the painting and would receive the most detail. Areas that were previously just blobs of paint had to be thought through a little bit more. What kind of surface am I painting? How weathered is it? How is the lighting affecting it and is it casting shadows? These are all things that ran though my head as I painted the image (Fig.06).